New Rice Lines for Africa Offer Virus Protection

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2024-01-rice-lines-africa-virus.html

Rice yellow mottle virus (RYMV) is responsible for high crop losses in Africa, particularly among small-scale farmers. A research team has now produced rice lines that are resistant to the disease by means of genome editing.

The rice varieties, the development of which the team describes in Plant Biotechnology Journal, are a preliminary step toward being able to generate resistant locally adapted elite varieties for small-scale food producers in Africa.

RYMV is an RNA virus spread by beetles and direct leaf-to-leaf contact. In Africa, where the majority of producers farm plots of land barely one hectare in size, between ten and one hundred percent of the rice harvests are regularly lost to this virus. This makes it a life-threatening problem for the poorest farmers.

There is no effective protection against the virus. "The only real protection is to develop rice varieties that possess a resistance gene against RYMV, which would make the plant invulnerable," says Dr. Yugander Arra, lead author of the study now published in Plant Biotechnology Journal.

A research team from the Institute for Molecular Physiology at HHU (headed by Professor Dr. Wolf B. Frommer) and the Institut de recherche pour le developpement (IRD) in Montpellier, France, has developed such resistant rice lines.

Three resistance genes are currently known; mutations in just one gene, RYMV1, 2, and 3, are sufficient to achieve resistance. The resistant form rymv2 occurs in poor-yielding African rice (Oryza glaberrima) varieties. RYMV2, also known as CPR5.1, encodes an essential protein from the pores of the cell nucleus.

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